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Historical and Cultural Towns (Villages) (HCTVs) are the important parts in the recordation of the traditional culture, folk customs and architectural art in China. However, with the rapid development of the economy and rural urbanization, these towns and villages are faced with a series of problems, such as traditional features lost, traditional architecture destroyed and the lack of a long-term comprehensive and effective plan for scientific conservation measures. As a result, these historic heritages and their surroundings are in a serious crisis and will be destroyed to a certain extent. This paper chose 799 HCTVs as objects of this study, which were published by the Department of Housing Construction. The distribution features and mechanism have been analyzed with thesupport of GIS technology. In addition, the spatial correlation between elevation, stream, transportation, traditional culture and language was also explained through spatial overlay analysis. Through the statistical comparison and cluster analysis, it explored natural and human factors with the influence of HCTV distribution. The purpose is to help us make selection more reasonable and offer a reference of development of regional tourism for the future. The results showed that: (1) The spatial distribution of HCTVs clearly varies among different regions of China, and four concentrated typical areas are found in the Shanxi-Hebei-Henan border area, southeast coastal zone, Sichuan-Chongqing-Guizhou border area and Hunan-Guangxi border area. (2) The distribution characteristics have a peculiar style in the countryside and have a trend of cluster around a geographic line (e.g., a traffic line, a river) and a small town. (3) The HCTV has different characteristics in spatial form, river system distribution, regional culture and transportation system. The majority of them are distributed along the river and are cultural centers, traffic hubs and birthplace of civilizations in history. (4) Natural geographical environment, current population distribution patterns, level of regional economic development, accumulation of historic and cultural heritages, as well as rules and standards in the definition of HCTV, are the main factors affecting the spatial distribution. The purpose of this paper is to help us select more reasonable criteria and rules in the process of HCTV selection.
Xie et al. (Sun,) studied this question.